A new European stock exchange being established by the former Chi-X Europe chief executive Alasdair Haynes has appointed the first directors to its board, as it gears up for launch in the middle of next year.

Alasdair Haynes

London-based Aquis Exchange, which Haynes plans to launch by the middle of 2013, has appointed Jonathan Clelland and Donal McCann as directors, according to filings with Companies House.

Clelland, a former chief operating officer of corporate finance and advisory at HSBC, is Aquis' chief operating officer and chief financial officer, according to an Aquis spokeswoman. McCann is a representative for a group of individual shareholders, who have provided backing to the start-up, she said.

The exchange expects to appoint more non-executive directors in the near future, she said.

Aquis will begin trading in European stocks by the middle of next year, pending regulatory approval for a multilateral trading facility licence with the UK’s Financial Services Authority.

The company is privately owned and backed by a number of individual investors, including Haynes, who is chief executive.

The London-based platform has ambitions to break the “duopoly” created by the merger of Europe’s two major pan-European players, Chi-X Europe and Bats Europe, in December last year. The deal made Bats the dominant player with around a quarter of pan-European trading..

The platform launches at a difficult time for Europe’s equities markets, where volumes have slumped during the past 18 months.

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However, Belinda Keheyan, formerly head of marketing at Chi-X Europe and head of marketing at Aquis, told Financial News last month: “One of the major barriers to entry in the European equities market is the fixed cost involved in securing top-quality technology talent. Due to the downturn, that talent is willing to join a start-up and Aquis is in a position to benefit.”

Aquis currently has eight employees including former Chi-X Europe technologist, Paul Roberts, as head of infrastructure, who is leading a team building out a trading platform from scratch.

Haynes left Chi-X Europe in January after the merger. He was previously head of ITG International, the agency broker.